


First Times

by eternaleponine



Series: Ghosts That We Knew [27]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, First Time, Gen, M/M, Rape, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:56:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5002024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote these over a year ago and realized I never posted them.  These are the first times for the majority of the main characters in Ghosts That We Knew/Time for a Sign/Say It Now.  </p><p>I have tried to tag for everything that could apply.  Not all tags apply to all chapters.  I will put notes before each chapter that specify which tags apply to that particular chapter.  Not all of the chapters are explicit, so I'll try to give an idea of rating as well.</p><p>If I have missed any tags that you think are important, please let me know.</p><p>Will post Monday/Wednesday/Friday until I run out of chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: Explicit  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: Underage drinking, underage sex, dubious consent

The first time was at one of his father's soirees. Tony didn't remember what it was for or why he was expected to be there. He was the youngest person there by far; this wasn't some kind of family event. He'd had too much to drink, but any amount was too much at that point, because he was only thirteen and maybe a little small for his age at that. But no one was going to say no to him, not when he'd only just lost his mother.

Only just... but it had been a year, more or less (it felt like more but might have been less, it felt like she'd been gone forever but then her dying had felt eternal, too...) and maybe it was for some charity, maybe it was for cancer research, maybe that's why he was there.

He didn't know. He didn't care. Tony Stark didn't care about anything, or at least that's what he told himself. It helped him sleep at night. (Who was he kidding? He didn't sleep at night, or during the day, or ever if he could help it. It was a waste of time, sleep.)

He sat sprawled on a couch, slid down so that his head rested against the back and his legs stuck out in front of him, the soles of his feet planted firmly on the ground by his knees spread. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and let himself drift in the mellow haze that alcohol brought.

He thought he was dreaming, at first. He'd had these kinds of dreams before, once or twice, although the details (names, faces) were always a little hazy. He woke from them excited and a little embarrassed, even if health class and the book his father (or really probably one of the servants) and the internet all told him that it was perfectly natural.

But the dream persisted even when he opened his eyes, even when he pinched himself. He looked around and discovered they were alone, just him and this girl – woman – who might have been sixteen or twenty or older even than that, but probably not who had mysteriously appeared on the couch beside him and was tracing her fingernail up and down, up and down the zipper of his pants.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said back.

"What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?" Her eyes were bright and Tony thought she'd probably had too much to drink, too, because he could taste it on her tongue when she kissed him, long and deep, and he kissed her back, and kissed her, and kissed her because he liked the way it felt and he liked the sounds she made and he liked the fact that while he was doing that it was impossible to think about anything else.

He wasn't sure how she ended up in his lap, whether he pulled her there or whether she did it herself, and he wasn't sure it mattered, only that she was there and he liked the weight of her pressing down on his hips, on parts of him that had never felt quite so alive as they did now. But it freed up his hands and the angle wasn't so awkward anymore so he traced them up her sides and cupped her breasts and she leaned into him, wisps of her hair coming loose around her face, and she rolled her hips slow and Tony's mind went places that were steps, leagues ahead of anywhere he'd actually been before (which was basically nowhere – he'd kissed a few girls before, or they'd kissed him, and one boy but that had been awkward and they'd both laughed it off and agreed to pretend it had never happened even though Tony hadn't hated it, it had just been the circumstances...) and he started to worry that this was all going to be over before it started if she kept... doing... _that_.

"Do you want me?" she whispered. 

He tried to think of something eloquent to say, something witty, but all that came out was, "Uh-huh." His mouth hung open as she reached for her purse and pulled out a condom, smiling at him as she scooted back off his lap and unzipped his pants, slipping them down and his boxers with them. She leaned in and kissed him again as she unrolled the latex, and then she was back in his lap without her lips even leaving his, or barely, and then...

And then...

He was inside of her. She rolled her hips and he could feel that he was inside of her, that she was tight around him and in his dreams he'd had no idea because he only had his own hand for reference but this was better, this was so much better, and...

And it didn't last long. At all. His cheeks flamed as he spilled, and he expected her to laugh or to be disappointed but if she was she didn't let it show. Instead she just took one of his hands and slid it between them, and his fingers touched something wet and as she arched and rolled she moaned, and he wasn't really _doing_ anything or at least it didn't feel like he was but in the end she gasped and groaned and kissed him again and whispered, "Thank you," and then she was gone like she'd never been and he was left wondering if maybe he'd dreamed it after all.


	2. Pepper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
> Pairing: None  
> Warnings: None

The first time was something that Pepper thought about a lot. _A lot._ Not constantly – she wasn't _obsessed_ or anything, but... often. At odd moments. Usually when she was supposed to be focusing on something else, something much more important than when and where and how she was going to lose her virginity.

Except that society didn't seem to think there was much that _was_ more important than that for a teenage girl. (Or a teenage boy, they weren't exempt, but it was a lot different for them, wasn't it?) Never mind the fact that virginity was a social construct and losing it didn't mean anything. It didn't change her value as a person no matter what _anyone_ would have her believe, and it didn't make her more or less of a woman. Having sex didn't make her a slut, and not having sex didn't make her a prude. 

It wasn't the be all and end all of teenager-hood. It didn't define her.

She knew all that... but she still thought about it. 

Because she wanted it to mean something. She wanted it to be with someone she cared about, maybe even loved, or at least thought she did at the time. She wanted it to be _special_ , not just a thing that happened just because they were bored or maybe not completely sober. She didn't want to be having The Talk with her future daughter (or son, she supposed, but she suspected that a son maybe wouldn't want all of the details, at least not from _Mom_ , where a daughter might) and have to tell her that it had just sort of happened, one thing led to another, in the back seat of a car somewhere, and it had been awkward and uncomfortable and...

But on the other hand, she didn't want it to be a cliché, either. But then, was there a way to lose one's virginity that _wasn't_ a cliché? Backseat definitely was. Prom night definitely was. But there were probably a bunch of other ways that were, too, if you read enough books or watched enough movies. 

She wanted it to be in a bed, that much she knew. She didn't want to have to worry about being poked in the back with a seatbelt or accidentally kicking the car into gear or something like that. She wanted to be able to stretch out and not be constantly worried that the police were going to drive by and see the car rocking and come knocking on the steamed-up windows to make sure that everything was all right. 

But not in a hotel on prom night, although she wasn't sure how people managed that anymore, considering that most hotels wouldn't rent rooms to anyone under 21 anyway. And what was she going to do, have her mom book a room for her? Not likely. She was pretty sure as far as Mrs. Potts was concerned, her daughter didn't even think about sex, and she certainly wasn't going to have it, not for a long, long time. Probably not until she was married, which was just as well.

Not that her parents were really religious, but they still had some pretty antiquated notions about certain things. Although probably they would be less concerned about whether she was married and more concerned about whether she had established herself in her career first. They wouldn't want her getting distracted. When her mother told her about sex, it was mostly to tell her that it would distract her from her studies, distract her from her goals, and that she really ought to be careful about who she spent time with and how much she invested in them because it was so much harder for women than for men and doing the wrong thing with the wrong person at the wrong time could kill her career before it even got off the ground.

Pepper knew that she didn't want to wait until she was married, that was for sure. She could sort of understand where people were coming from... sort of... and at least some people who were fixated on purity didn't hold it as a double-standard – they were just as concerned that the boy was 'pure' as the girl. But... it didn't really make sense to her. How could you commit yourself to someone for the rest of your life when you didn't even know whether you had any physical or sexual chemistry? How miserable would it be to tie the knot, so to speak, and then on your wedding night you realize that what you want in bed isn't what they want, and now you're stuck with them?

No, Pepper wasn't going to wait until marriage. Maybe 'til college, though. She thought maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. She would have more freedom then, and she was more likely to actually have a place to _go_ to do it, as long as her roommate was out of the room, or the boy's was. A twin bed wouldn't be ideal, but there was a sort of intimacy to it, and that was the whole point, wasn't it? But then there was sort of the same problem as the car situation – the roommate could come at any time (unless maybe they were away for the night, or the weekend?) or someone else could come knocking or there could be a fire drill, or...

So a college dorm probably wasn't the ideal setting, either, but it was more than likely better than anything she would be able to manage in high school. 

She thought about candles and flowers, but if she was the one who did all of that, it would be pretty obvious that it was her first time, and that she was trying too hard to make it romantic and perfect. And she knew that it wouldn't be perfect. She knew that it was likely to be a little bit awkward and that things weren't likely to go according to plan, so she knew that it was best not to try and really plan for it... except for making sure that she had a condom. That was important, because women couldn't count on men to provide the protection, especially when it was really the woman who needed it. And if he refused to use it or tried to convince her that they didn't need it or anything like that, then it was game over, because he was definitely not the right guy.

Sometimes she tried to imagine what the boy – man? – would be like, but that's where her mind generally balked. It was only in her actual dreams that she ever seemed to be able to get a glimpse of the face of the person she imagined would be the one who she let take her to bed for the first time.

And when she woke up, she cursed her subconscious for a traitor.


	3. Thor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: None

Thor's first time was a complete cliché. He knew it. His girlfriend knew it too, but she didn't seem to mind. They even laughed about it, afterward, and the laughing felt good. (If he was being honest, the laughing about it almost felt better than the actual doing it that first time.)

They'd been together for over a year by that point. Her name was Kelsey, and she wasn't the head cheerleader, but she _was_ a cheerleader, and he was the quarterback, and that's how they'd met. It hadn't been love at first sight or anything like that. They'd just started talking at a party one day after a game, and talking had turned to kissing (and yes, there had been alcohol involved, but not that much, not enough that they could really blame it on that if blame was to be laid, just enough that it loosened them up a little so that they were willing to look beyond the Every High School Movie Ever aspects of the situation) and kissing had turned, eventually, to other things. Not that night, not at that party, although Thor might have tried to cop a feel and she might have smacked him for it, not hard, and he might have looked sheepish enough that she forgave him.

No, it all happened in inches and degrees, a slow burn of sexual tension that eventually led to sexual release, first with hands and then with mouths – her getting him off more often than the other way around, not because he wasn't willing but because for a while she was hesitant to let him, embarrassed, maybe, he wasn't sure, or maybe she'd just heard too many of her friends telling her that no boy would ever do that so she'd better not ever expect it. 

But the first time they went all the way, it was in a guest room at a friend's (unchaperoned) house on prom night. The father of one of his teammates had given his son the keys to the family vacation house, and of course he knew what was going to go on but he turned a blind eye as long as they kept themselves in control. As long as the cops didn't get called, it was pretty much a free-for-all.

Thor didn't drink that night, because he didn't want to end up doing something stupid as a result. Not that one drink would have affected him too much, but... he wanted to get this right. He didn't want Kelsey to be disappointed, because he knew that it was her first time, too.

They slipped away when they thought no one was looking, and since half of everyone else there was making out in corners, it was even possible that no one did. They found one of the guest rooms with its door still open and went inside, shutting and locking it behind them. They both knew what was going to happen, so when they slid into each other's arms to kiss, there was something that felt... rehearsed about it. Not forced, exactly, but like they were following a script and this was the first part of the blocking.

He tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about the fact that he didn't know what he was doing – obviously he knew what went where, he'd seen the videos in health and anyway, _everyone_ knew that tab A went into slot B – but beyond that... 

So the kissing went on maybe longer than it might have, until it stopped feeling awkward and started to feel more natural, until Thor, at least, started to forget that they weren't just kissing for kissing's sake and that it wasn't just the first stop on the trip to the Promised Land. 

It was Kelsey who made the first step toward the bed, pulling away from him but only enough to glance back and make sure that she wasn't going to trip over anything. She had her hands on Thor's arms, which were around her waist, so he had no choice but to follow or let go, and he wasn't letting go. So a moment later they were sitting on the edge of the bed, and a moment after that they were sprawling across the bedspread, and buttons and zippers were being loosened and then undone completely and clothing started to come off. Thor's shirt (his tie was long gone) and then the top of her dress, his pants and then the dress was a puddle on the floor. Her bra, his socks, and then it was just the two of them in their underwear, shivering a little as the air-conditioned air hit their sweat-damp skin. 

"Maybe we should..." he suggested, gesturing at the covers, and she nodded so they crawled under them, and then he kissed her again, soft and slow, holding her close and closer until she didn't have goosebumps anymore... until they rose back up as his hands slid down over her hips, his thumbs hooking in the waistband of her panties, and he slid them down and off and tossed them out of their cocoon of blankets. 

She bit her lip as his hand slid between her legs, her eyes wide until he found the right spot to touch and then they closed and her back arched, and she let him do it for a minute or two before shifting her hips away and pulling down his boxers.

They'd been naked with each other before, but never together, never at the same time. There'd been an unspoken rule that one of them stayed at least partially dressed while they got the other one off, and then when they were finished they pulled something on before taking care of the other one. Thor wasn't even sure if they'd ever talked about it; it was just something that happened. But now... now they were both stripped to the skin, bare as the day they were born, and he felt it. He _felt_ naked, exposed... vulnerable.

"Are you sure?" he asked her.

Kelsey nodded. "I'm sure. Are you?"

"Yes," Thor said, and he was pretty sure that he was sure, anyway. Obviously he wanted it to happen, obviously he wanted to do this... what red-blooded man – boy – man didn't? He looked over at the nightstand and found that there was a package of condoms. He hadn't put it there, which meant that their absent host must have, knowing full well what people were going to get up to. 

_I guess they'd rather not have to worry about anyone getting pregnant at the party,_ Thor thought. He took one and opened the package, and Kelsey took it from him and rolled it on, and Thor almost asked if she'd been practicing because they'd never used them before and she seemed to know how it was done. Except he couldn't quite get the words out because he was distracted by her hand moving up and down, slow, teasing.

There was almost a dare in her eyes as he kissed her again and rolled her onto her back, and he only hesitated a second as he figured out the right angle (he hoped) to make this all work. He went slow, trying to keep his eyes open to watch her face and make sure that everything was okay, and she didn't make any faces that made it seem like it hurt (which seemed to be the one thing that everyone agreed on, that it always hurt for the girl the first time, and he really didn't want that to be the case), didn't make any sounds, and when she smiled up at him he knew that it was okay.

After that, biology kind of took over, and he'd thought it would last longer somehow but... it didn't. He tried, but it just felt... and then it was over, and he held himself up so he didn't crush her as he pulled out rolled to the side. 

"Wow," he breathed. "Wow."

"Yeah," she said, only she didn't quite sound as 'wow' as he felt, and he forced himself to open his eyes and look at her. She was biting her lip, although she forced herself to turn it into a smile when he looked at her.

"Did you...?" he asked, because it wasn't exactly that he hadn't been paying _attention_ so much as that he really hadn't been able to pay attention. 

"Um." Her nose wrinkled the way it did when she wanted to say something but didn't know how to say it.

"Oh. Do you want me to...?"

"You don't... have to."

Thor pushed himself up on one elbow, leaning over to kiss her, his hand tracing down her side to her hip and back between her legs to finish what he'd started. And it didn't take long, so that was something, and maybe next time they would do better.

She curled against him after, her head on his shoulder, and she laughed softly. "So I guess that's it," she said. "I guess that's what all the fuss is about."

"I guess so," Thor agreed.

"Maybe it's like everything else," Kelsey said. "Practice makes perfect."

Thor grinned. "Well, any time you want to practice, let me know."

"Don't worry," she said. "I will."


	4. Loki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
> Pairing: M/M  
> Warnings: None

Loki's first time was at camp. He didn't like to tell anyone about it, because it led to the inevitable parroting of, "And this one time, at band camp..." But it wasn't band camp. It was theater camp. So really, drama was to be expected.

Not that there'd been drama, exactly. In order for there to be drama, there would have had to have been some acknowledgment of it to cause drama. The only drama was internal, hushed up and stuffed down, and if anyone outside of the two of them had known what was going on, or guessed, by some miracle it never made it into the rumor mill.

Caleb wasn't Loki's original roommate. Loki's original roommate had had to go home – family emergency, allegedly, but Loki was pretty sure he was being a drama queen about not getting cast in the things he wanted to be cast in, not getting the roles he wanted, so he went home in a huff. It wasn't without precedent. And Caleb and his original roommate had... irreconcilable differences, apparently, which from what Loki gathered meant that Caleb's roommate was loud and a slob, and he wasn't going to change that no matter how many times one of the counselors tried to intervene.

Loki was neither of those things. He could be loud if and when he needed to be, but in general he was relatively quiet, and he kept his things tidy. So they got along well enough from the start, and within a few days they were together more often than they were apart.

It happened one night while they were running through lines. It was Caleb's scene that they were working through, a play to Loki's musical, and they were doing their best to be professional even though Loki had to read the role of the female lead. He was playing it as straight as possible (no pun intended) but every once in a while Caleb would just look at him and start laughing.

"What we have here," Loki said, trying to be harsh but mostly teasing, "is a failure of imagination."

"Do you _want_ me to be able to imagine you as Amanda?" Caleb asked. "Because that's the problem. I keep picturing you in her costume and... it's just funny, okay?"

Loki sniffed. "It's called being an actor," he said. But the mental image, now that he had it, _was_ rather amusing. "Start again."

So Caleb started again, and when they hit the point in the scene where they were supposed to kiss, Loki thought he would just gloss past it. Caleb was, after all, the straightest straight boy to ever attend theater camp. (They weren't as rare as some people would have you believe, but it often seemed that they were in the minority for the first time in their lives. Which made some of them uncomfortable, and sometimes Loki wondered if the perception that theater camps were filled with gay boys kept straight ones away. He would think it would be the opposite, considering that most of the _girls_ were straight so they had significantly improved odds, but apparently it didn't work that way. Societal brainwashing regarding gender being what it was and all.)

Anyway, Loki thought that he would gloss over it, maybe give an awkward kiss on the cheek... but he didn't. Caleb kissed him, full on the mouth. Just a stage kiss... at first, but then it turned into something more. Lips parted and tongues touched and they were in each other's arms, holding tight, the lines and angles of their bodies pressed hard together and it was pretty obvious that Caleb meant it.

"It's just," he breathed into Loki's ears when they finally broke the kiss, panting, "it's just that I _can_ picture you as Amanda, only... not... Amanda... but... a girl. I can see you as a girl, and..."

Loki knew he ought to be insulted, but he wasn't. Not really. Being a girl wasn't an insult, after all. Some of the smartest, most beautiful, and toughest people he knew were girls. Pepper Potts ruled the drama club with an iron fist, and she was a girl. Carol Danvers had more or less headed up the stage crew, and knew how to fix pretty much anything that broke, and she was a girl. Natasha Romanova could quell pretty much anyone with a glance, and she was a girl. So if Caleb could picture him as a girl, was that such a bad thing?

And he was an actor. He could be whatever, whoever, he was asked to be. His entire life was an act, after all, even though he hadn't known until recently the role he was playing.

"We should finish the scene," Loki said. "The showcase is tomorrow."

"Right," Caleb said. "Right, but..."

"And when we finish, if there's any part you want to go over again..."

Caleb looked at him, looked him right in the eye (and he had to look up a little because Loki was taller, but it didn't feel awkward even though Loki was playing the girl), and let out a breath that Loki wondered if he had known he was holding. "Right."

So they finished the scene, and started again from the beginning, and this time when they got to the kiss they didn't stop. Kissing, that was. Not the scene. The scene halted, forgotten, as they tumbled into bed (Loki's, not Caleb's) and hands found their way to places that they'd never been before, on each other or on anyone else (at least in Loki's case; he didn't know about Caleb) and clothes started coming off.

Loki wondered vaguely if they'd locked the door behind them when they came in, then decided it didn't matter because who was going to come in? It was their room and they were both in it, and if anyone barged in it would be their own fault if they saw something they didn't want to. 

Once they started, it didn't take long for the scene to reach its climax (again, no pun intended) and in the dénouement they laid tangled, skin damp with sweat, hearts pounding fast but slowly calming, ragged breaths evening out.

Caleb pushed himself up on his elbow to look down at Loki. "I'm not..." he said.

"Neither am I," Loki replied, even though he knew they meant different things.

"Okay," Caleb said. "As long as you don't think..."

"I don't," Loki told him. 

"Okay." Caleb got up, got dressed, and went to take a shower or somewhere. He didn't say.

And that was the end, Loki thought, and he told himself he was okay with it. 

Until the next night when Caleb kissed him again.


	5. Jessica

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: E  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: Rape, Underage, Violence

Jessica's first time was bloody, although not in the way that they were taught to expect (although it was that, too), and she was lucky that she got out of it alive.

Where she came from, girls kept themselves pure until marriage. They weren't supposed to kiss boys, or hold hands with boys, or really have anything to do with boys (unless they were members of their immediate family) until they were old enough to be married... and then only with the boy that they were going to marry.

They had a say in who they married (except when they didn't) and they didn't get married off when they were too young to consent to men with more than one wife (except when they did). It wasn't like what the media would have people believe (except when it was).

And Jessica didn't.  
And she did.  
And he did.  
And it was.

"Just... don't worry about it," one of the older girls told her – not a girl anymore, because she was married and pregnant with her first child even though she was only just barely twenty. "I mean, of course you're worried but... it's not that bad. Just try to relax and let it happen. It doesn't usually last long and you might even get to like it. I did." And she blushed and smiled and laid her hand on the swell of her belly.

"You wanted it," Jessica pointed out. "I don't."

"It's an honor, though," they told her. Everyone told her. "You've been chosen."

It was all she could do not to spit in their faces. She'd been _chosen_ because her parents wanted to control her. Their leader wanted to control her. They thought that if they married her off, got her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, it would shut her up or shut her down or turn her into the girl they'd always wanted her to be and that she had no intention of becoming.

"I won't do it," she said. "I won't."

And she resisted. She dug her heels in and she refused to have anything to do with any of the preparations (which were done in only a few days from the time she was told about it, but she suspected they'd all been plotting it behind her back for a lot longer). On the morning of the ceremony, it took three women to get her into the dress, and as soon as they'd managed to zip and button her into it, she dropped to the ground (hoping to smudge the pristine white, hoping to ruin it because she knew that her mother had put a lot of work into it) and would not move.

Her father and another man hauled her up, one grabbing each arm, and they lifted her bodily and carried her that way to the chapel, because the minute either of them loosened their grip she began to sag to the ground again.

"You're behaving like a child," her mother said, fingers dug into the back of Jessica's arm and twisting. It was the same spot she always pinched, and the bruise there had its own bruises by now; it never completely healed. 

"I _am_ a child," Jessica pointed out. "You can't do this. It's not legal."

"Oh, and you're an expert now on the law?" 

"Everyone knows," Jessica replied. "Everyone knows you have to be at least sixteen to be married, and I'm not. Therefore, child. Therefore, fuck you."

Her mother slapped her then, hard enough that it left a mark on her cheek, vivid red, that remained as her father hauled her down the aisle of the chapel. She went empty-handed because she refused to hold the flowers she was given, and she could taste blood in her mouth as one of the elders of the church read the vows since their leader couldn't do it himself. 

She didn't say them, and it didn't matter. She refused to recite back the words that she was given, and she refused to say 'I do' because she didn't. She didn't agree to, or with, any of this. And it didn't matter. She would have taken a step back when he tried to kiss her but he had already figured out that that was how it was going to go, so he had her by the arms, locked in place while it happened.

Afterward, there were congratulations that she didn't accept, and a meal that she didn't eat. The day passed in a blur of rage and despair that tasted like dirty pennies. And then it got late. The sun went down and darkness fell and she felt sick, and she wondered what would happen if she threw up all over him, if he would leave her alone, and she regretted not eating then because there was nothing in her stomach to come up.

She would have locked herself in the bathroom but the door didn't have a lock. Locks didn't exist here, except on the rooms that belonged to him, the ones that they were forbidden to enter without permission. She stayed in there as long as she could, but finally her mother just barged in. "Jessica, it's time that you grew up," she said. "It's done. Accept it. The only person making you miserable is you. You could be happy. This is how it's meant to be. Once you settle in, you'll understand. This is how God wants it."

"God wants girls married to men more than twice their age that they hate?" she asked.

"God wants women to understand their roles as wives and mothers," her mother told her. "Women came from men – Eve was made from Adam's rib – and men protect us and we provide them with comfort. It's the natural order of things."

"What about Lilith?" Jessica asked. "What about Adam's first wife?"

"Now you're just speaking nonsense," her mother said. "Put this on." She held out a different white garment, a nightgown this time, or so Jessica assumed. 

"No."

"Put it on," her mother repeated. "Unless you'd rather just go to his bed naked. But you'd have to walk all the way through the house like that, and I'm sure that's not what you want."

"I don't want any of this," Jessica said. "Haven't you been listening?"

"Oh, I've been listening," her mother said. "I've listened to you whine and complain and argue. I've listened to you speak blasphemy and heresy. I've listened until I was sick of the sound of your voice. But I didn't hear a single word that convinced me that we were making the wrong decision and the wrong choice. This is what's best for you, Jessica, and the sooner you accept that, the easier your life is going to be. Now take off that dress and put this on."

"No."

But she ended up in the nightgown anyway. This time it took four women, and they all had marks to show for it when she was done with them, and her cheek burned from a second slap from her mother. Her hair was a mess because she wouldn't let them smooth it, and the makeup they'd so carefully applied to try to cover up the fact that she'd spent the entire night before crying (she hadn't meant to, she'd sworn she wouldn't over this, because she was angry, not sad – sadness, to her, meant she'd already given up) was smudged.

He wouldn't care. She knew he wouldn't care. 

The bedroom had a lock. That was the first thing she discovered. The bedroom door had a lock... on the outside. The lock inside required a key that she didn't have, but he must. Which meant that if he chose, he could keep her captive here, literally as well as figuratively.

She stayed on her feet. The nightgown they'd forced her into revealed more skin than women were ever meant to show to anyone but their husband, but she guessed that was the point. She crossed her arms over her chest, acutely conscious of the fact that she was wearing nothing beneath it; they'd stripped it all away, and now it was up to her husband whether she got any of her clothing back. Now it was up to her husband whether she got anything at all, ever, because he owned her now.

She stood facing the door, and she waited. And waited. And waited. 

He was busy, maybe, but more likely he was trying to wear her down. He wanted her to give up before he got there. He wanted her to make it easy. 

There was no way she was going to make it easy.

When he finally came in, she was still standing. She heard the lock twist and click, and then the door opened and there he was, and he locked it behind him and tucked away the key, then approached her. He was taller than her, although not by as much as it seemed like he ought to be. For someone with so much influence, so much control, he was a relatively small man. 

She wanted to step back as he came close enough to touch her, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her in retreat. So she just glared, and didn't move, and didn't react (much) when he touched her, and didn't respond when he kissed her, and finally he stopped, sighed, shook his head.

"Jessica," he said, "you know this is all futile, don't you?"

"You know that if you touch me, it's rape, don't you?" she replied.

"You're my wife."

"I'm fifteen."

"Your parents gave permission."

"You think that would stand up in court?"

"You think this will ever make it to court?"

And there it was. They were outside of the world, and unless she could find a way to escape, a way to get out so that they couldn't find her and bring her back, it didn't matter what the laws were, and what the courts would do or say. None of it mattered because that was _there_ and this was _here_ and this man was a law unto himself, even if he said it was all God's law.

Jessica refused to believe that God (if He existed, and she wasn't 100% convinced on that account, or at least not in the form she'd been force-fed her entire life) would want something like this. She refused to believe that the man who created the world and everything beautiful (and everything ugly, she reminded herself, but was that really God or was that man twisting God's creation to his own purposes and turning it into something ugly, something vile, something perverse?) would want this to be happening right now.

"You can make this easy, Jessica, or you can make this hard, but either way, it's going to happen. So I'll give you a few minutes to decide." He left the room again then, and came back smelling of mint and some sort of sickening aftershave, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. 

"Did you decide?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. 

"And what did you decide?"

"That there is no way I'm letting you touch me."

He sighed. "That's what I was afraid you were going to say."

She fought. She did fight. But the fact of the matter was he was bigger than her, and stronger than her, and no one had ever really taught her _how_ to fight, because of course that wasn't something that a girl would ever need to know. So in the end he had her pinned to the bed, her wrists above her head, and he pressed her down with his body.

Her stomach lurched when she felt how much he was getting off on this, how excited he was. He let go of one wrist so that he could pull up her nightgown and pull down his shorts, and she twisted then, bringing her elbow and slamming it into the side of his face.

His nose exploded in a fountain of blood, spattering her face and all down the front of the pure white of her nightgown and the sheets. She bared her teeth at him even as he grabbed her again, and yanked her over and around, and she felt the world drop out from underneath her as her legs slid over the edge of the bed, and the air against the back of her thighs as he tossed the long nightgown up over her head, almost trapping her with it, and his arm pressed down hard on her back, almost at her neck.

She didn't give him the satisfaction of screaming, although she wanted to as he kicked her legs apart and took her that way, hard and fast and rough, and she was glad that she didn't have to see his face because she knew that he was enjoying it, knew that he would look smug, triumphant. And she was glad that he couldn't see the tears that ran down her face. Her makeup smeared and ran, staining the sheets, and the blood, his blood that she could still hear him snuffling and snorting through as he grunted and groaned his way to climax, came off with it, so if anyone wanted proof that he'd done the deed he could show them that, couldn't he, and they wouldn't know the difference.

She felt it when he came, when he spilled himself inside of her, and she shoved back against him then, and he toppled, weak-kneed, and she turned and glared at him. "Get out," she said. "You got what you came for. Get out."

He did. She hadn't thought he would, but he did.

And then, only then, with a pillow tight over her face so no one would hear, did she scream herself hoarse.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: E  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: None

Bruce wasn't sure if his first time counted... or if he wanted it to. Not that that there was anything wrong with it, exactly... except everything. But maybe that was being a little melodramatic. It was kind of a melodramatic time in his life, though, so really, who could blame him?

It happened at his mother's funeral. Or... not at the funeral, but at the thing after. The reception? Weddings had receptions, but did you call it the same thing at a funeral? It seemed wrong. It seemed like there ought to be another word for it, to separate the two. Because getting married and dying were two completely different things.

Except when they weren't. Because his mother had been dying a little bit every day from the time she married his father, and maybe from the time she met him, and not in the sense that everyone was dying a little bit every day anyway, but in the sense that he broke her down bit by bit, day by day, until finally she was just a shell that he cracked like an egg and left to bleed out its insides all over the...

He tried not to think about it. He couldn't think about anything else.

His father wasn't there at the funeral. He'd been arrested; it hadn't taken them long to figure out who'd done it, and truth be told, Bruce was pretty sure that the cops and everyone else had seen it coming, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do about it until it got to the point that there was nothing that could be done. 

Maybe if his mother had tried to get help... but she'd never tried. She loved him, he knew that much, but not enough. Not enough to get away from his father, or too much and she thought that he needed a father, any father...

He didn't know. He tried not to think about it because he didn't want it to be his fault. But it was, wasn't it? Because maybe if he'd never been born...

"Hey," she said, a friend of a friend or something. Had his mother had friends? Not really. If she'd had friends, maybe someone would have said something, someone would have done something. She just had people she knew, but they weren't friends, and they'd come out of the woodwork to wish him well but it was only empty words.

"Hey," he replied. 

"So this all sucks pretty bad," she said.

He almost laughed. It just sort of bubbled up inside of him, even though it wasn't funny, and he had to swallow it down. "That's... pretty much an understatement."

She smiled a bit sheepishly. "Yeah well. What do you say when shit like this goes down?"

Bruce shrugged. "I don't know. Can't say I've ever been through it before."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Pretty much a once in a lifetime kind of thing."

"Yeah." He looked at her then out of the corner of his eye, trying to study her without her knowing he was doing it, trying to place her and coming up blank. Finally he gave up and just asked, "Do I know you?"

"No," she said. "My mom... she knew your mom a long time ago, I guess. When they were kids? Something like that. I guess they were close. Like sisters, she said, but I think maybe she's... romanticizing it? Like remembering them being closer than they were? But maybe not. Anyway, she heard about it and she said we had to come. Or that she had to come and I came as moral support, only..." The girl shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not sure she cares one way or the other that I'm here right now."

"Which one's yours?" he asked, looking around at the clusters of faces – mostly women – who (sparsely) populated the room. They all blurred together and if any of them looked like this girl he wasn't seeing the resemblance. 

She pointed, but it didn't really clear things up and Bruce decided he didn't honestly care that much. "Oh," he said. "Well... sorry."

"For what?"

"That you got dragged to a funeral for someone you never met and don't have any reason to care about." 

"I don't mind," the girl said. "I just thought..." She stopped, shrugged. "I think my mom's drunk so we'll probably be here a while until she sobers up, and you looked... lonely, I guess. Or maybe bored."

"Maybe both," Bruce said. 

"Maybe."

But her mom didn't sober up. Not enough that she was safe to drive, anyway, and finally Bruce's grandparents offered to let her and her daughter (her name was something that began with L – Laura, Lori, Lauren... Bruce tried to remember it but pretty much every memory from that day was about as easy to hold as an eel, so when he thought about her she was just L in his head) stay the night.

L's mom was given the couch, and L got the floor, or at least that's what she said when she crawled into bed with Bruce in the middle of the night, after everyone else was asleep. "It's not very comfortable," she whispered. "I hope you don't mind..."

He didn't. He didn't think he did. It was nice not to be alone, anyway, and it wasn't as if he was sleeping. 

He didn't mean for it to happen. He wasn't sure she did, either, but he also wasn't sure she didn't. Why else would she just climb into bed with a complete stranger? But maybe she just meant to comfort him, so he wouldn't have to be alone in the dark with the memories of the last few days... months... years...

Maybe she really was just looking for a more comfortable place to sleep.

He wasn't sure who kissed who first. He might have done it, not quite accidentally, or she might have. They were sharing a pillow, and that brought them nose to nose, so close he could feel her breath on his face, and she hadn't been planning on staying so she didn't have a toothbrush but he thought maybe she'd used some mouthwash or at least chewed a stick of gum because it smelled like mint, but underneath that was a layer of everything she'd eaten that day.

He hadn't eaten anything. He wasn't hungry. He hadn't been hungry in days.

Somehow their lips came together, though, and he probably should have stopped it as soon as he realized what was happening, but it felt good, and he liked the way her fingers felt as they slid into his hair and the way her body felt as it pressed close to his. 

"What are you...?" he asked, but she shook her head. _Don't ask questions,_ she said without saying anything, or maybe, _I don't know, just go with it,_ or maybe, _I'm not doing anything, you're doing it,_ or maybe none or all of the above.

She was smaller than him, thin and bony, but soft in places where girls were supposed to be soft, at least a little, and she made noises when he touched her that made his body react in ways that were purely instinctive, purely animal, and he wanted in ways he never really had.

Clothes came off, not slowly, once it seemed they'd decided that this – whatever this was – was going to happen. Only when everything was off, and they were pressed hard against each other under the blankets in the dark, did it occur to either of them that maybe they hadn't thought this completely through.

But he didn't want to stop, and neither did she, or at least her hips didn't because they kept rolling against his. Trouble was, he wasn't prepared for this. Neither of them was prepared for this, and Bruce knew down to his core what could happen if you did stuff like this without being prepared, because he was the end result of one such indiscretion, and it only took one time, and he wasn't going to go there.

"Just don't go inside me," she whispered. "Just... like this..." And she pressed her legs together, tight, and guided him between them, but just to the space in between and not into her. "When you're going to... just... y'know, tell me, and..." 

He didn't need any more encouragement than that. His body didn't, anyway, and by that point his head had pretty much completely turned off, which was a relief after days of not being able to do anything but think, think about all of the things he'd done wrong, all of the things he might have done differently that might have saved his mother. 

He thrust against her, mindless, animal, and there was a part of him that wanted to take a chance, wanted to push her onto her back and roll on top of her and have her, _really_ have her, just lose himself completely in her, and he would just stop, like she'd said, before...

But that wasn't the deal. Not that they'd made a deal exactly, but kind of, and no matter how good it would feel, he didn't want her to hate him after. He didn't want her to be able to say that he'd done something she hadn't wanted. He didn't want to be anything at all like his father, ever.

It came over him like his entire body tightening, more intense than anything he'd ever felt when it was just him and his hand, and he knew he should stop but he couldn't. He kissed her hard, so hard he tasted the faintest metallic tang of blood as his teeth dug into his own lip, and that quick flash of pain was enough, thankfully, to distract him from his rutting, and he hesitated.

She pulled away then, and gripped him, and when he spilled it was into her hand, against her belly, safely away from anywhere that might get either of them into trouble. He sprawled back with a groan, and she looked around, discovered his box of tissues was empty, and wiped her hand on his sheets instead. 

"Do you want me to...?" he asked, but she shook her head. "I got it," she said. "Boys never get it right anyway."

He probably should have taken that as a challenge, insisted, but instead he just watched as she slid her hand between her legs to finish herself off, falling asleep before she came.


	7. Carol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: F/F  
> Warnings: None

Carol didn't see her first time coming. In hindsight, maybe she should have. But at the time, it felt as if it came out of nowhere, and it turned her world upside down. But not in a bad way. Not at all.

_Technically_ , she was still a virgin, at least in the most traditional sense. But she didn't consider herself to be one. Not after what happened that night, in that tent, with that girl.

She called herself Dakota but Carol wasn't sure if that was her real name or one that she'd chosen for herself for reasons unknown but that probably had something to do with the patriarchy. Which was a concept that Carol was only starting to understand, even though she'd grown up surrounded by and steeped in its influence. It didn't matter, really, what her name was. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and all that.

Not that she smelled all that sweet. Not that any of them did by that point, on the last night of a long weekend camping trip where they didn't have access to proper showers. A dip in the nearby lake had washed away the worst of the dirt, but a thin layer of sweat and bugspray still clung to everyone's skin.

She'd come with her friend Marcie, and for the first two nights of the trip, she'd shared a tent with her, but now Marcie had decided to hook up with David, one of the two guys who had come along with the group that was mostly girls, and Carol was left to figure out her sleeping situation for the night, because there was no way she was going in there, even to try to retrieve her sleeping bag.

"You can share with me," Dakota said, sitting down next to Carol and offering her a bottle. None of them were actually legal to drink, but somehow they still had alcohol aplenty, and they'd made judicious use of it. "I mean, unless you're into voyeurism. Or threesomes." 

Carol laughed and took a swig, the gulp big enough to be a shot, and she felt it burn its way down her throat. "Not so much," she said. "Thanks." She indicated the bottle, taking another sip before handing it back. She wasn't sure about her other offer; they'd only just met that weekend and they honestly hadn't talked that much, although Dakota seemed nice enough. She was a couple of years older than most of them; she'd just finished her freshman year of college. Carol couldn't remember where, even though she'd been listening to her stories all weekend, half envious and half wishing she would just shut up already.

They sat together in silence as the campfire began to burn itself down and everyone else retreated to their tents. Finally Dakota nudged her, not hard but harder than she meant to, maybe, or Carol was more tipsy than she thought. "I don't bite," she said. "Unless you're into that kind of thing." She said it with a grin that said it was a joke... if Carol wanted it to be.

And the warmth in Carol's core suddenly wasn't all from the alcohol, and the flush on her skin wasn't entirely from the fire. So when Dakota leaned in and kissed her, it wasn't really a surprise, and she didn't pull away. 

It wasn't her first kiss. She'd kissed plenty of boys, but usually only for a second and usually just once, as part of some game or a dare or just because she was feeling warm and happy and they were there. There had been a few where it had turned into a little more than that – drunken (and sometimes not so drunken) make-outs that had once or twice led to hands finding their way inside clothing, but nothing past, like, second-and-a-half base, because she'd gotten uncomfortable and asked him to stop.

But this... this was different. This felt... different. Better. Like somehow Dakota's lips touching hers had unlocked something inside of her that couldn't be locked back in, even if she'd wanted to and she didn't think she did. So when the other girl asked her again to come back to her tent with her, this time Carol nodded and after taking the last swallow from the bottle they'd been sharing (which had been half or two-thirds empty when they'd started, Carol was pretty sure she could still walk a straight line if asked) she followed her.

The sound of a zipper had never seemed quite so final... or exciting... before.

The tent was small, intended for only one person, so the air mattress took up pretty much the entire space. Dakota kicked off her shoes and Carol did the same, and when she patted the space beside her, Carol took it, because she wanted to (despite the butterflies in her stomach) and because she really didn't have any other choice.

And then they were kissing again, if kissing was the word for it, but it felt more... consuming than that. Like it wasn't just their mouths, it wasn't just lips and tongues, it was Carol's entire body that flared, consumed by heat, and it was as if everything else was stripped away, leaving her as a shell that held only one thing – desire. She ached with it, literally ached with it, between her legs where no one had ever touched her but herself and then only once or twice because she'd always been told – implicitly if not outright – that it was wrong to do so. 

Not for boys, of course. For boys it was natural and normal, they all did it, they couldn't help themselves. But for girls... no. Girls existed for men's pleasure, was the message they'd been given pretty much from the time they were old enough to be _girls_ instead of undifferentiated human blobs that did nothing but eat, sleep, and poop. Carol remembered being conscious of it from a pretty young age, though. Not the sexual part, but the fact that boys and girls were different, and girls were less than. The way her father treated her brothers versus how he treated her told her that loud and clear.

But there were no boys here, so she couldn't exist for their pleasure. Which meant she was there for one of two things – to give pleasure to another girl, or to receive it. Except that wasn't right. It wasn't one or the other. For the first time in her life, she realized, really realized, that it could actually be about both.

Undressing was awkward in the small space, but they managed it, and Carol had had enough to drink that she could sort of tune out the background noise in her head that said that she should feel weird about being naked with another girl like that, that she should be self-conscious or something about the fact that someone else, someone she hardly knew, could see all of her, could reach out across only a very little space between them and touch her in places that no one had ever seen, at least not since she got old enough to take a shower instead of a bath, much less touched. 

There was a second, a breath, where they just looked at each other, and then Dakota reached across the space and then there was no space, and there was no air as their mouths pressed together again, and then their breasts and bellies and hips, and one of Dakota's thighs slid between hers, locking their legs together and pressing, pressing and rocking her hips and Carol moaned into her mouth as sparks crackled up her spine.

Time stood still, the earth flipped on its axis, all of that stuff that you read about in YA books that Carol had always thought was probably hyperbole and/or bullshit... all of that happened, or felt like it did, and for a few minutes she just let herself feel, just let Dakota do whatever she wanted because everything she did felt good, better than good, and even if it was selfish to just accept it without trying to reciprocate, Carol felt like maybe at least for the moment that was okay.

Only then she got curious, so she forced herself to push what she was feeling a little bit into the background, because if this was happening, really, then she wanted to experience all of it, and so she reached out and let her hands slide up Dakota's sides to her breasts, and then down her belly to her hips, and then lower, and she grinned as the other girl gasped, knowing that she'd gotten it right.

It might have been easier if they'd taken turns; they might have been able to find better angles for hands and bodies, but now it felt like they'd committed to something, and it wasn't a competition or a race, but now they both wanted to give as good as they got.

Carol came first, her back arching, a wordless strangled cry stifled on her lips as Dakota kissed her, and it took a minute for her to recover enough to go back to what she'd been doing, and another minute or two before the other girl groaned and eased Carol's hand away.

"You sure you've never done that before?" Dakota asked, because somewhere along the line Carol had panted something about, 'I've never...' She was grinning, almost laughing.

"I'm sure," Carol said. "But... I want to do it again."

Then Dakota did laugh. "That can probably be arranged."


	8. Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: G  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: None

Steve had always assumed his first time would be on his wedding night. Not because he'd ever been told it had to be, although of course they were encouraged to wait until they found the right person, who would or should be the person they planned to spend the rest of their life with. But the God that Steve believed in, the God that he had been taught to believe in, wasn't the kind of God who was going to damn someone to Hell because they had sex before they were married. Steve didn't even believe in Hell, really.

Mostly he'd always assumed it because he knew that he wanted it to mean something, and he figured when he found the person who it was going to mean something with, they would probably be the one that he was going to marry, so why not wait?

He'd told Peggy that at one point, although the details of the conversation were a bit foggy now. They'd been talking about his mother, probably, and how they'd had so many conversations about so many things over the years, and sometimes they weren't really conversations that he was ready to have, but his mother felt that she had to say what she wanted to say because she wasn't sure she'd be around when he was more ready. Which had led to him talking about how his father had been the only man his mother had ever been with – first, last, and only, she'd said – and how she'd never even considered going on a date after his death. 

He didn't know about his father, whether his mother had been the only one for him. Steve had been too young when he died to ask that kind of thing, or to even think about it, and he'd been too embarrassed to ask his mom. But he remembered that they loved each other, so even if she wasn't the first, she'd been the last, and the best, and that's what he wanted.

Which was possibly too much to ask, the world being what it was, but no matter what the magazines and newspapers and internet and everything else said, the world wasn't really a worse place now than it had been... or at least that's what he wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that maybe it would be against the odds, but he wanted - _needed_ \- to believe that he could have what his parents had.

But anyway, he'd told Peggy once that he'd always assumed that his first time would be on his wedding night. She'd smiled at him and shook her head. "I couldn't do that," she said. "Even if I was completely in love with a guy, I don't think I would want to leave something that big, that important, to chance." She'd sprawled back against the arm of the couch and put her feet in his lap. "Think about it. Say there's this person that you are head over heels for, and so you decide to take the plunge, ask them to marry you, they say yes, you go through it all, and then on that first night you discover that there is just... nothing going on between you physically. Like, you thought that there would be, you'd felt all of these twinges, these aches, these _wants_ for this whole time, but then when it comes right down to it you just can't make it work, physically. And maybe it gets better but... maybe it doesn't." She wrinkled her nose at him. "I just... couldn't."

And she'd had a point. It was a pretty big deal, and it could be a make or break thing in a relationship. 

But that didn't mean he didn't want it to mean something, and to be with someone that he cared about, someone that he _loved_ , someone that he could see a future with, even if it never came to pass.

They started to move even before Steve's house sold, because even if he had a place to stay, and even if he wouldn't have minded her staying with him while they figured things out, Peggy wanted to be settled before the start of the new school year. And they'd gotten an offer on the house that the realtor said was likely to go through so he figured he might as well, since it wouldn't be long before he wouldn't have to worry about the costs of maintaining the house along with paying rent.

They day they moved their beds in was the day that it really started to feel real. It gave the whole thing a sense of finality, and Steve wasn't quite sure how he felt about it or how well he would sleep, so he didn't mind that the hours ticked by with them just talking about everything and nothing in particular. By the time they went to their rooms, which were across the hall from each other, he felt worn out, and he hoped that that meant he would sleep.

And he did, and it felt heavy and deep, and when he woke up... it had been less than an hour. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his mind to quiet enough to drift off again. He finally got up, figuring maybe if he got a drink – water, although something stronger was tempting, but he didn't think they actually had anything in the house, being underage and law-abiding citizens and all – it would somehow make it easier to sleep.

He opened his door, and found himself face-to-face with Peggy, whose hand was raised like she'd been just about to knock. "Feel free to laugh at me," she said, "but I couldn't sleep because the closet door in my room won't stay shut and even though logically I know that it's just a faulty catch and we can fix it tomorrow, there's a part of my brain – which sounds an awful lot like Sharon – that keeps saying there are monsters lurking in there, and... I'm always a mess on my first night in a new place."

"You can come sleep with me," Steve said, before he could think about what he was saying. He flushed. "Share my bed with me, I mean. Or you can have my bed and I'll—"

Peggy kissed him then, soft and quick, sort of on the side of his mouth so that maybe it was just meant as a thank you, and she'd been aiming for his cheek and missed, but Steve kind of got the feeling that Peggy Carter didn't often miss when she took aim at something.

The moon came in one window, because they hadn't gotten curtains yet and the shade was broken (another project for another day), and it lit the room with its glow, but it was a little like being in a black and white movie because all of the colors were skewed. 

He hadn't thought it was possible for Peggy to be more beautiful than he already thought she was.

He'd been wrong.

They crawled into bed together, and this time when Peggy kissed him he knew that she meant it, and it wasn't just a thank you. It was – it felt like – an invitation, and he knew that he could decline and it would be okay, they would just sleep, and in the morning they wouldn't forget, and maybe they'd talk about it or maybe they wouldn't, but either way one of them would make coffee while the other made breakfast and life would go on.

He _could_ decline, but the truth was he didn't want to. He wouldn't say that he'd seen this coming, exactly, but there had been something building between them for a long time now and here, now, in this moment, it felt right. And meaningful, and...

"I love you," he told her.

"I know," she said. "I love you too."

And it wasn't, 'I do,' but it was enough.


	9. Bobbi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: G  
> Pairing: None  
> Warnings: None

Bobbi figured her first time would happen eventually. She wasn't all that worried about it, honestly. 

Which made her a bit of a statistical outlier, or so she was led to believe. It seemed like for a lot of people her age, sex was some kind of all-consuming thing. It was all they thought about, all they talked about... or maybe she'd just watched way too much TV in the past couple of years, and had started to buy into the bullshit the media was trying to sell her on. 

But she was a biologist, and libido was just another bodily function that needed to be satisfied periodically, like eating and sleeping. And just like eating and sleeping, she was perfectly capable of meeting the need herself.

There had been a part of her (which she chose to believe had been the result of a brain addled by pain medication and daytime television) that had latched on to the thought that she COULDN'T DIE A VIRGIN OMG. That is, until she reminded it that it was too late, because she'd been dead – not braindead, but asystolic – and the doctors had brought her back. 

So she'd already died a virgin, so there.

But then she'd been in the hospital again, dealing with her body attempting to reject her transplanted heart, and in darker moments she'd started to think that maybe she wasn't going to live much longer and wouldn't it be nice to know what all the fuss was about?

She would never admit it to him, but that was part of the reason she'd started talking to Bruce in the first place, but really, she was in no fit physical state to get up to much, and his mental state was possibly even more precarious, so that ship had been dead in the water before it even launched. (And then there was the fact that she hadn't been entirely sure that Bruce wasn't holding a torch for his friend Tony who basically refused to leave his bedside, or vice versa, or both. Now that she knew them better she still half expected at some point – maybe some sleep-deprived night in the dorms at MIT – they'd end up in bed together, even if it was only just once.)

Now she was healthy, and had her whole life ahead of her, which meant there was plenty of time for sex later on, when she wasn't too busy living her life.


	10. Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: Underage, Dubious Consent

Clint couldn't remember his first time. Not in any great detail, anyway. There were two times that sort of blurred together in his mind, that happened over the span of not very long one summer, and by now he couldn't really remember which had been first and which had been second, or what had happened with which girl.

There was alcohol involved both times, because it was easy to get access to and the older boys thought it was funny to spike his soda with it. He knew they were doing it. He wasn't stupid, and he could taste the difference. He didn't complain, though, because at that point in his life he was looking for someone's footsteps to follow in and he knew he didn't want it to be his father's so he looked up to his brother instead, and tagged along after him and his friends whenever they would let him get away with it.

So when they told him to drink, he drank, and when the world spun around him and he stumbled and they laughed, he laughed with them. And when they started talking big about this girl or that girl that they'd been with, well, then he had to shut up because what did he know about any of that? Not that he wasn't curious. He had blood running through his veins as red as any of theirs. But he'd never had the chance.

One night one of them looked at him and said, "We need to get you laid, little man."

"No shit," he replied, and they thought that was hilarious.

And then he forgot all about it, until one night he was just standing around after the show, when the grounds had emptied of patrons and they were packing things away, but they didn't need to pack up completely because they were still going to be there for another two days so he didn't have anything to do. 

He barely registered that anyone was approaching him, because his eyes were on the stars. He was watching them dance, and wondering if possibly this time they'd slipped him something other than Jack Daniels. When he felt hands on his hips, he blinked and looked down, only it seemed to take a lot longer than it should so by the time he did he was looking at the top of someone's head – a girl, that much he could tell from the hair – and his belt was undone and his jeans unzipped, and then...

And then the world spun even more wildly and it felt good, it felt amazing, and it felt strange and awkward to watch so he just looked up at the stars again and thought about how probably somewhere out there, somewhere in the wild universe, one of them was going supernova at the same time he did.

When it was over she zipped him back up again and wiped her mouth and smiled and didn't kiss him, and she didn't give her name and he didn't ask and probably it was one of the circus girls but maybe not because he never saw her again.

That was probably the first time, unless the first time was the night where the air was so thick with humidity that it felt like an actual weight on his shoulders, pressing him down and making every motion, every step, feel like it was happening in slow motion. He'd performed that night, not his first show, not even one of the first, but it was the first summer that he was part of the main show, and he was pretty sure they'd cheered for him but honestly he hadn't been paying a lot of attention because he didn't do it for that. 

Well, maybe a little for that, but mostly he did it because at the end of the night his mentor would clap him on the shoulder and squeeze it and smile, and he didn't say he'd done a good job but Clint felt it. 

And then the other boys, who ran rides and games or shoveled elephant shit or put up tents and took them down again and swept up popcorn and all of that would tease him about how he was getting too big for his britches, how his head was going to swell up because he was a _performer_ now and now just a rousty (even though he did a lot of that too) and then they'd do whatever they felt like they had to do to make sure he stayed in his place.

He hadn't missed that night, because he never missed, but his mentor hadn't found him after and that weighed on him as much as the air, but he pushed himself through the sticky heat and went to find something to drink.

The lights were still on as he stumbled back toward his family's trailer, bright smears against the night, which was overcast like it was going to storm and Clint wished that it would and just get it over with. But he didn't make it home, not right away, because the next thing he knew someone had him by the arm and was dragging him off, into the shadows and behind a trailer that was for something greasy, maybe fried dough or Bloomin' Onions or something else that was likely to make you sick to your stomach. The air was slick and slightly rancid.

The person – a girl when he caught a glimpse of her, but a strong girl, and older than him, pretty in a way but not like you'd see in movies or magazines and maybe it was just the alcohol and the lights that made him think so – pushed him back against the trailer and shoved her hand down his pants, and he guessed she liked what she found (unless she was laughing at him?) because she smiled, grinned, really, showing teeth.

And then it just happened. She kissed him and he kissed back (he was pretty sure he kissed back...) and she put his hands up her shirt and she wasn't wearing a bra, and then she slid one down under her skirt and she wasn't wearing anything under that either.

He didn't remember going from standing to lying down, but he didn't think he fell. Probably she pushed him. She liked pushing, and pulling, and pretty much just making him do whatever she wanted him to do, and he was okay with it because he was supposed to be okay with it and it (mostly) felt good and she kept whispering things into his ear that went straight to his groin even as they left him feeling just a little bit queasy.

She straddled his hips and all he had to do was lay there and she did all the work, and it didn't last long but she just smiled and pinched his cheek and whispered, "You'll do better next time."

His cheeks flushed red and his ears burned. What had she expected? He was thirteen years old.


	11. Natasha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: M/F  
> Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage, Forced Prostitution

Natasha's first time was one of many things she wished she could forget.

She tried to tell herself that it didn't count, that it hadn't been her choice, that it had been taken from her and not given and so it didn't count, damn it, but the truth was it did count because no matter how hard she tried – and she _did_ try – she couldn't erase it from her mind.

It would always be there, a scar that still split and bled sometimes, especially when she was alone and the night stretched long and dark ahead of her and sleep refused to come. 

She'd known it was coming. She'd sensed it, in the way that the men looked at her, her uncle's friends and business associates, the ones that she served food and then drinks to, the ones who undressed her with their eyes. She'd sensed it in the way that her uncle looked at her, too, with dollar signs in his eyes as she dodged away from an overly friendly hand, and the half-heard conversations that hinted at just how much they would be willing to give to have a chance at her.

So she'd known it was coming, even if she didn't know the who or the how or the when of it. 

And in a way – a stomach-wrenching, soul-crushing way – it was a relief when it finally happened, because at least she didn't have to wait and wonder and worry anymore. 

He made her dress in one of the dresses that had been here longer than she had, and it didn't fit right, but he told her to wear it anyway, and if she was a good girl maybe he would buy her a new one that fit better. He watched over her shoulder as she made herself up, this color not that, not too much but not too little, and blood red for your lips. He gave her heels that made her as tall as he was and dug his fingers into her arm and shook her when she wobbled. "Get it together, little girl," he said. "You are a woman tonight."

It started like any other night, with his friends crowding around the table and her making sure that their glasses didn't go dry, except that night her uncle cut things short, sending most of the men home when otherwise they might have stayed all night, or close enough to it. Finally there was only one man left. He wasn't one that Natasha recognized; if he'd been there before she hadn't taken any special notice of him, and maybe he was new... and maybe that was why. Maybe her uncle thought that this would cement whatever deal they were striking.

His eyes burned when he looked at her. His gaze had been following her all night, and she felt it. It made her skin itch and all she wanted to do was crawl out of it and escape, but there was no escaping. Finally her uncle looked at her, smiled, and said, "Go to your room, Natalia."

So she went, because there was no point in arguing. There was nowhere else for her to go, and nowhere to run. She'd been in this country for a month or a little more, and the only place she knew other than this apartment was school and the cemetery, and neither place could save her now. She wished there was a lock on her door, but of course there wasn't.

She didn't sit. She paced. She stopped when she saw herself in the mirror, saw the ghost-whiteness of her face in the mirror under the makeup, and the way her eyes had gone so wide they seemed to take up her entire face. She tried to make her expression more normal, narrowed her eyes until she was glaring, and she didn't care what anyone had to say about it, it was better than letting on how afraid she was.  
She didn't see the money change hands. She didn't hear the terms of her sale. But she knew it was happening.

Finally the door opened, and the man stepped in. He was middle-aged, middling height and weight and looks. He was nothing remarkable at all. "Come here," he said, holding out his hands to her. "Let me see you."

Natasha looked at him, and for a second it was _his_ eyes that went wide, and she felt a flash of triumph as, for one split second, she thought maybe he would change his mind. But it didn't last, and when she didn't come to him, he came to her, his hands clamping down on her upper arms. "Let me look at you," he repeated, but it wasn't really looking that he had in mind.

She turned her mind off then, just let it go blank and not register what was happening. It was as if she stood outside her own body, a thing apart, and he could have the shell of it but he couldn't have _her_ , the part of her that was at the core that she guessed most people would call the soul. She saw what was happening but she tried not to feel it, not to take it in, not to remember.

It worked for a little while, when he was just playing his games before getting to the point. But then he pushed her back onto the bed – her bed, and why did it have to be here, in her bed, where she would have to sleep when it was over, and every night after? And as her body fell, she fell back into it.

He unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall and she didn't look. She stared at the ceiling, at the cracks and stains there, and she didn't look because she didn't want to see, she didn't want to know. 

And then it was just pain, pain and ragged smelly breath against her cheek, and she turned her face away and closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself anywhere but here, doing anything but this. 

She thought, fleetingly, of Clint, and for a second her mind latched onto the idea that maybe if she imagined it was him instead... but it wouldn't work, because he wouldn't do this. She knew he wouldn't because he hadn't. She'd given him the chance, she'd tried to take it, take control of her life and her body, but he'd said no. He'd stopped her.

She'd been angry with him for it. Furious. But not really, because it proved what she'd known in her gut all along – he was good. He was good and he'd known something was wrong, something was off, and he'd seen her tears and he'd stopped. And she wanted to hate him for it but she couldn't because she loved him too much.

She thought that maybe that had been the moment when she'd fallen, or started to fall. She wasn't sure, even in hindsight, but if that wasn't the exact moment, it was one of them.

So no, she wasn't going to let this man take that away from her along with everything else. She would just have to find some other way...

And then it was over. With a grunt and a groan, it was over. He kissed her then, sloppy and wet, and then he got up and pulled his pants back on and was gone.

And so was she. She forced herself up and stripped off her clothes and stood in front of the mirror and stared, and when she looked at herself, she could see plain as anything that a part of her was gone, and she could never get it back.

She didn't sleep that night. Not even for a second.


End file.
